The first seed sowing of the year

Now that feels good. I have sown the peas and broad beans. It’s always a milestone when you get the first crops in.

Actually I have had some broad beans in the ground for a month or so now. Some Aquadulce Claudia broad beans. I sowed them in modules in the potting shed and put them out a few weeks back. Before the snow. And it felt like I was sending them off to their doom.

But amazingly, most came through the snow unscathed. I only lost a few plants.  So those ones will be up before the seeds which went in today.

The actual work didn’t take long as I had already weeded the beds back in the autumn.

All I really needed to do was lift the last of the carrots and a few parsnips and strange little oca things. What do you call them? Tubers? Oxalis tuberosis. I bought them from the real seed company.  (Dan and Katherine  if you are thinking of planting them in Wisconsin here is the link giving you a bit of background about them: http://www.realseeds.co.uk/unusualtubers.html but they need a long growing season and mildish autumns, so maybe they are not for you).

They are apparatently a staple crop in Bolivia and Peru.

I actually forgot they were in the bed, but I should have been reminded by the telltale oxalis foliage above ground during the growing season.

But this is the bed where carrot and parsnip seeds just get flung about to baffle the mole rat from cleaning up entire rows. And it worked. A good late February crop here.

So I just removed the few weeds raked over and then planted my seeds. I’m using the automatic watering hoses down the beds as my guide for where to put the rows.  If only all gardening were this easy.

I will need to mulch the beds heavily to prevent the massive weed invasion which is due any day now as the weather warms up.  But it was a most satisfying task. One of those start as you mean to go on for the season jobs.